April 23, 2018 – Our time machine travels back 100 years, to witness the split-second explosion that blew a chunk of Halifax, Nova Scotia off the map. On December 6, 1917, this key city in supplying the Allies in the Great War, suffered the largest man-made explosion prior to the bombs that ended World War Two — something that caught the attention of physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb.” On the shore in Canada to witness the collision in the harbor is John U. Bacon, author of The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism. John U. Bacon teaches at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and the University of Michigan. He’s written five New York Times bestsellers, including Three and Out, Fourth and Long, and, Endzone. You can catch him often on NPR and national TV, as well as JohnUBacon.com, @JohnUBacon on Twitter, or Facebook.com/JohnUBaconAuthor. Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04:27 — 147.5MB)Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | RSS | More

April 9, 2018 – Our time machine travels back to 1931 to conclude the Durant Family Trilogy. Moving on from the Gilded Age, we’ll catch up with William and Ella, the adult children of Union Pacific Railroad tycoon Dr. Thomas C. Durant, in the final years of their complicated lives. Our guest, Sheila Myers, first introduced us to the family in her novel, Imaginary Brightness, as they had their comfortable lives in London shattered by an economic panic. Book 2, Castles in the Air, saw the William and Ella locking horns, as their father continued to exert influence on their lives from beyond the grave. In the conclusion, The Night Is Done, William and Ella cast their eyes back on their lives, and confront the stark truth about their legacy and long-gone fortune. Sheila Myers is an associate professor at Cayuga Community College, which feeds her passion for the Durant family in upstate New York’s Adirondack Mountains. You can follow her on Twitter @SheilaMMyers or visit her online at WWDurantStory.com. And you can listen to our previous interviews on both Imaginary Brightness and Castles in the Air in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com, or wherever you’re listening. Podcast: Download…